Reclaiming food
autonomy as a response
to crisis
Robert Biel
UCL Development Planning Unit
approaches to the topic:
1. projects through UCL
.... some explicitly
health-related
London 2062
2. Political Ecology
critiquing systems which channel
wealth, resources and power to
those who already have them
... resulting in widespread
environmental injustice,
deprivation, malnutrition, food
poverty
... the food
issue is
political!
3. practice in farming
low-input method working with
soil as complex system
Political Ecology framework for
this topic
Marx: we are alienated ... from
nature, and at the same time,
from product of our own labour
this is why we are at the same
time exploited, and also messed
up, mentally and physically
‘metabolic rift’
(Bellamy Foster 2009)
in nature, everything, organic or
mineral, is cycled around
traditional
sustainable farming
systems slot into
these cycles
in a physical sense, the
rift happens when we
lose touch with this
illustration: de Rosnay 1979
at a level of property relations, the
alienation or rift is expressed in
expropriation (grabbing, ripping away)
... both of the land itself, and
crucially, of knowledge
... resulting in disempowerment,
loss of resilience, loss of
confidence that we can cope
in the global South it’s even worse: acute
deprivation, food insecurity, land and
knowledge grabbed by corporate interests
at a social level alone, this would
demand change
... but climate crisis – which
qualitatively increases vulnerability –
adds another dimension to the urgency
technical parameters to understanding
and healing the rift
mitigation-adaptation
what’s conventionally seen as
mitigation, though it’s really about
kick-starting benign feedback loops
the natural metabolic cycle is also a
carbon cycle
therefore, as
part of
metabolic rift,
we could
conceptualise a
‘carbon rift’
soil holds nearly three times as much
carbon as vegetation and twice that of the
atmosphere (Yi et al, 2011)
soil conservation is “central to the longevity of any
civilization,” (Montgomery 2007) ; but at present soil is
vanishing at up to 50 tonnes per hectare per year, 100
times faster than its formation rate (Banwart 2011)
there are interesting technical
solutions to correct this
feedback loop: the more carbon we
can get into the soil, the better plants
will grow, and the more carbon they
absorb ... thus we simultaneously feed
the planet and solve the climate
problem
adaptation
primarily a question of diversity
wide spread of responses to shocks
and extreme events
a. diversity of crops and of strains
b. allowing biodiversity to
reconstitute itself (natural
predators, pollinating insects)
but the alienation can’t be healed at a
purely technical level
also a question of property
relations
self-organising nature –
self-organising society
... commons
knowledge commons, reconstituting
traditional approaches...
e.g. in relation
to carbon
loops:
recapturing
initiative, autonomy,
coping...
radical social movements initiated
in global South
food
sovereignty
and reclaiming the land itself:
tradition of struggle in this
country
Land and Freedom Camp, Clapham Common,
London, September 2011
self-organising nature –
self-organising society
the alienation or rift is healed
through a convergence from
both these directions
... thanks very much!
Robert Biel
[email protected]